Common Projects may be one of the most beloved sneaker brands for both the
fashion community and celebs including Jay Z, Kanye West, Nick Jonas and John
Legend, to name a few, but designers Peter Poopat and Flavio Girolami have
remained pretty low key (save for their recent feature on The New York Times) —
and they seem to prefer it that way.
Since launching in 2004, the NY-based footwear brand has never advertised
their kicks.
"That's how we started. We just tried letting the product speak for itself,"
Girolami explained to MR PORTER US editor Dan Rookwood on Tuesday evening during
a rare Q&A session held with the designers at Milk Studios in L.A. "We just
tried to let people talk about it."
"I think in the same way the shoes that we didn't want to wear were… nothing
against that, it just wasn't our style. In the same way they were so colorful
and bold and screaming for attention in some ways — the thought of the brand was
to not do that," said Poopat, former V magazine art director, who met Girolami,
a brand consultant, in New York through mutual friends.
"As Flavio said, 'let it speak for itself.' And just to project something to
our audience, we like the audience to project themselves into it and have it
become for them rather than us telling them what it is."
So far it's been working in their favor — Common Projects' minimalist
sneakers are carried by more than 150 retailers worldwide including Mr Porter,
which recently featured a story called "The World's Best Shoes." According to an
interview with Business of Fashion in 2014, Poopat said the Net-a-Porter Group
was their largest account at the time.
Asked what led them to create premium shoes (a pair runs between $380 to
$535), Poopat explained: "I think it was drawn out of necessity that Flavio and
I both appreciated the minor things that, at the time, we couldn't find
something we wanted to wear all the time."
"Back in the day […] there was a lot of colors and we were both wearing very
simple things and at the time, my shoes had totally fallen apart. It just kind
of happened," he continued. "And we needed to fill that gap, so we created
something we both mutually liked and it became the Achilles."
Since the release of the Achilles in 2004, Common Projects has gone on to
collaborate with designers Robert Gellar and Tim Coppens, and the eyewear brand
Moscot. Most recently, the brand launched a women's shoe collection — one of
their latest "projects."
After 10 years of being in business, the founders have no interest in doing
anything different.
"We wouldn't have it any other way, at least to this point. I think our
process, the way we work together, we don't have to answer to anyone," said
Poopat. "We have to answer to our customers. I think that's the most important
thing instead of the person counting the number of shoes."
Added Girolami: "It's also the only way for the product to be true to itself.
It doesn't have to report or be forced to be something different because some
investor wants to up the numbers. For us, our goal is to keep the products as
good as possible and close to what our ideas are."
